September 2005, Week 2 -- Keep
It Clean

If your computer is
running slowly, there may be more than spyware to blame. PCs are prone
to slow down, crash or freeze for no apparent reason. But often it's
because of the residue from programs that have been installed and later
removed.

The same things happen to us, so we ran the
new version of Fix-It Utilities (Fix-It 6), $50, from
www.V-com.com. This program has been around for many years, so a lot
of experience has gone into refining it for each new version. Here's our
experience:

We started Fix-It and clicked on the "One
Stop Solutions" button. One of our sub-choices was labeled "All in One,"
and we clicked on that as a likely kind of title to take care of general
housekeeping. The program then proceeded to clean our computer -- for
the next 17 hours!

Now you have to understand that the computer
we were cleaning had more than 130 programs loaded into it. That would
not be the situation for most people. The first clean-up for most users
would take somewhere between one-half and two hours. Subsequent
cleanings would take about 15 minutes and can be set to start
automatically at times when you wouldn't be using the machine -- middle
of the night on a weekend, for example.

Fix-It got rid of 1,518 registry items that
were causing us problems. It zipped 1,365 files that were orphaned (lost
their originating programs) or corrupted, and moved those files into an
"undo" archive, in case we later decided we were better off before they
were removed. The cleaning continued with the removal or compression of
the usual suspects: taking out the trash basket, clearing the temp file,
finding duplicates, etc., and defragging the hard drive.

We're leery of
having more than one anti-virus program, however, and the opinions of
other users are mixed on this issue. We removed a freebie in favor of
theirs, which is from Trend Micro. In the past, Bob has found that
running more than one anti-virus has blocked some programs from running
properly and has also blocked the downloading of legitimate data.

Fix-It also warns
of possible hard disk failure, which you can take seriously or not, as
you wish. In general, there's plenty of time to panic.

Fix-It 6 comes
either on its own or as part of a larger package called System Suite 6,
which costs $60, instead of the $50 for Fix-It 6 alone. You get some
interesting stuff for the extra $10: There's a firewall, an uninstaller,
a utility to move programs from one computer to another, anonymous Web
surfing, an "autosave" back-up utility, and a "secure erase" utility for
wiping your hard drive if you want to donate your computer.

Maid Service

If you want someone else to do
the cleanup, TSS (www.tss.cc)
offers a kind of computer maid service for $10 and up a month. Using a
remote control program, TSS will take charge of your computer for an
hour or more and do the same kind of maintenance that you could do
yourself, but may not want to bother with. It'll empty the trash, clean
the temp bin, remove spyware, defrag the drive, etc. It will not work on
the registry files, which it considers dangerous.

You can watch what's happening on the screen, but you
cannot work on the computer at the same time. If you are mistrustful and
think sensitive files are being accessed, you can unplug or stop the
action. Cleanup takes an hour or two. Service contracts range from $10
to $30 a month, depending on how much cleaning you want done.

NOTE: You can do all of this cleaning yourself, but as
with maid service, some people prefer to just have someone else do it.

Internuts

·
www.bytetest.com: You can go here to get a free invitation to
Google's e-mail service, but availability is limited. As of this
writing, 7,680 slots were open. Google Mail is still in the testing
stage, but it's been in the testing stage for over a year, and we've
been using it for a year with no problems. It's Joy's favorite e-mail
service and Bob's second favorite, after AOL. Google mail has a great
spam blocker and will hold that spam for 30 days in a special folder in
case you want to go over it. It holds your regular e-mail virtually
forever, and that is its best feature; you can search previous messages,
no matter how old.

·
www.spacekids.com: A science Web site aimed at kids. Science news
and photos, some of which were snapped by kids.

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